Facebook's Face Recognition Tech
Published Mar 7, 2018 12:05 am
By Mark Isaiah David
If you’ve suddenly been peppered with notifications from Facebook about photos that might include you, then you’ve come face to face (sorry) with FB’s new feature – Facebook Face Recognition.
The technology isn’t really new – the new feature is run by the same tech that Facebook uses to give you suggestions on people you might want to tag whenever you post a photo or video. This time, however, the options are switched. Even when people don’t tag you in their photos, Facebook will notify you of the possibility that you might be included in said photo.
The reason behind the feature is simple: it gives the user more control about his/her own image on Facebook. Suppose that one of your frenemies posts an unflattering photo of you. With the new face recognition feature, you will be notified about the post and a couple of choices will be made available to you – you can leave it as is, you can tag yourself, possibly ask the uploader to take the photo down, or even report it to Facebook.
The feature isn’t all powerful, however –you will only be notified if you’re an audience(Facebook’s term for who can or cannot see content) of the post. If you’re not a friend of the person who uploaded the photo, for example, and the post’s privacy settings was set to “Friends Only”, then you wouldn’t get notified. Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of FB’s Applied Machine Learning, explained that, “We always respect the privacy setting people select when posting a photo on Facebook (whether that’s friends, public or a custom audience), so you won’t receive a notification if you’re not in the audience.”
While that may sound like a humongous loophole that people can exploit, at least you will always be notified if someone else is using your photo as their own Profile Picture. Because Profile Photos are always set to ‘Public’, the feature could also help prevent impersonation.
Another limitation of the feature is its rollout – Facebook’s Face Recognition would be available in most places, but not in Canada and the EU where privacy laws prevent its implementation.
On the positive side, this new feature complements the company’s efforts to make Facebook accessible to all people regardless of ability. In the past, Facebook launched an automatic alt-text tool that could help people with vision problems by describing photos. With this new feature, users who utilize screen readers will also know the people who are in the photo even if they weren’t tagged.
If for any reason you don’t want this feature activated, you can easily turn it off in your Facebook Settings page.
If you’ve suddenly been peppered with notifications from Facebook about photos that might include you, then you’ve come face to face (sorry) with FB’s new feature – Facebook Face Recognition.
The technology isn’t really new – the new feature is run by the same tech that Facebook uses to give you suggestions on people you might want to tag whenever you post a photo or video. This time, however, the options are switched. Even when people don’t tag you in their photos, Facebook will notify you of the possibility that you might be included in said photo.
The reason behind the feature is simple: it gives the user more control about his/her own image on Facebook. Suppose that one of your frenemies posts an unflattering photo of you. With the new face recognition feature, you will be notified about the post and a couple of choices will be made available to you – you can leave it as is, you can tag yourself, possibly ask the uploader to take the photo down, or even report it to Facebook.
The feature isn’t all powerful, however –you will only be notified if you’re an audience(Facebook’s term for who can or cannot see content) of the post. If you’re not a friend of the person who uploaded the photo, for example, and the post’s privacy settings was set to “Friends Only”, then you wouldn’t get notified. Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of FB’s Applied Machine Learning, explained that, “We always respect the privacy setting people select when posting a photo on Facebook (whether that’s friends, public or a custom audience), so you won’t receive a notification if you’re not in the audience.”
While that may sound like a humongous loophole that people can exploit, at least you will always be notified if someone else is using your photo as their own Profile Picture. Because Profile Photos are always set to ‘Public’, the feature could also help prevent impersonation.
Another limitation of the feature is its rollout – Facebook’s Face Recognition would be available in most places, but not in Canada and the EU where privacy laws prevent its implementation.
On the positive side, this new feature complements the company’s efforts to make Facebook accessible to all people regardless of ability. In the past, Facebook launched an automatic alt-text tool that could help people with vision problems by describing photos. With this new feature, users who utilize screen readers will also know the people who are in the photo even if they weren’t tagged.
If for any reason you don’t want this feature activated, you can easily turn it off in your Facebook Settings page.